Younger Consumers Pay More Attention to Online Ads, Survey Finds

Dive Brief:

Atten­tion to online ads often depends on the age of the view­er, accord­ing to a press release about the sec­ond in a series of reports on ad expe­ri­ence from dig­i­tal ad plat­form RevJet. Among 18-to-44-year-olds, there’s a 47% increase in atten­tion com­pared to 2018, but only 7% for those 45 and old­er. For Face­book ads, the increase is 49% for the younger set and 25% for the old­er crowd. But, for YouTube ads, there’s a 38% increase over 2018 for 18-to-44-year-olds, com­pared to an 85% increase for those 45 and old­er.

Both age groups are main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo for skip­ping video ads, with 2% less for each, com­pared to 2018. And both are more accept­ing of auto-play video ads, with a 43% increase in accep­tance among 18-to-44-year-olds and a 143% increase in accep­tance for those 45 and old­er.

The report also found that con­sumers aged 45 and old­er are buy­ing 38% more online prod­ucts now com­pared to 2018, while there was only a 9% increase in online pur­chas­es by 18-to-44-year-olds dur­ing the same peri­od.

Dive Insight:

RevJet’s find­ings point to a cou­ple of pos­i­tive trends for dig­i­tal mar­keters and arrive amid new research show­ing that dig­i­tal ad rev­enue topped $100 bil­lion for the first time last year. Younger con­sumers pay­ing more atten­tion to ads is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy, as this group has, in the past, been shown to have a pen­chant for using adblock­ers or sim­ply ignor­ing ads. Both mil­len­ni­als and Gen Z are big users of adblock­ers, accord­ing to sep­a­rate research. How­ev­er, when researchers take a more gran­u­lar approach there are indi­ca­tions that Gen Z is inter­est­ed in some forms of adver­tis­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly out-of-home and video.

It’s also inter­est­ing that old­er con­sumers are becom­ing more com­fort­able with shop­ping online. This sup­ports oth­er recent trends like CPG brands putting a big­ger focus on direct-to-con­sumer offer­ings and a surge in shop­pable dig­i­tal ad for­mats.

How­ev­er, the report also under­scores some of the ongo­ing chal­lenges in dig­i­tal media, in par­tic­u­lar, con­cern over data pri­va­cy. Eighty-six per­cent of both age groups com­bined expressed con­cern about dig­i­tal pri­va­cy, although there’s a slight age split: 18-to-44-year-olds are becom­ing more con­cerned, but those over 45 are becom­ing less con­cerned.

Anoth­er key take­away from the RevJet report is that mar­keters need to keep their dig­i­tal con­tent rel­e­vant and avoid putting the same cre­ative in front of con­sumers as they move around web prop­er­ties. More than 90% of those 45 and old­er dis­likes a com­pa­ny that is repeat­ing an ad or whose ads are not aligned with the viewer’s inter­ests or sit­u­a­tion. But, among the 18–44 set, only about 68% would feel neg­a­tive­ly toward such an adver­tis­er.

Con­duct­ed online in Jan­u­ary, the sur­vey sam­pled 1,000 indi­vid­u­als aged 18 and old­er in the U.S.